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MONTREAL - The FINA World Aquatics Championship held in Montreal in 2005 went off the rails almost from the beginning as organizers struggled to meet the financial demands of a world-class sports event that were far more costly than they had originally envisioned.

Budgets proposed to Montreal 2005 by two experts in organizing sports events were rejected by the organizing committee because they were much higher than expected, leading to the resignation of the first director general, Eric Savard, and the hiring of a replacement who knew nothing about sports events.

Financial documents, letters and emails from Montreal 2005, as the organizing committee was known, obtained by The Gazette through access to information as well as interviews with major players, indicate that the board was slow to agree to a budget and business plans and for a long time didn't even have proper banking and office facilities.

This forced the organizer to award thousands of dollars in contracts on the basis of only verbal agreements, angering members of the board.

Eric Savard was hired in the fall of 2001. But by the summer of 2002 he had left on "bad terms," he said in an interview Monday evening.

Savard refused to disclose details of his rift with Montreal 2005 that ultimately resulted in his exit other than to say it was a "really bad financial structural situation." He added that it "put us in an environment that we couldn't work together any more."

While working for Montreal 2005, he was also organizing the World Youth Athletics Championships, held in Sherbrooke in 2003. Juggling both events became complicated. Because Montreal 2005 was slow to get started, Savard said he was forced to use resources from Sherbrooke 2003 to make up for deficiencies in Montreal 2005. When he left as chief organizer for the aquatics championships, the Montreal event had to pay $87,877.90 to settle outstanding debts to him as well as to the Sherbrooke event.

"I didn't get what I should have been paid," he said in a telephone interview from his home in the Bahamas.

Lawyer Marco Veilleux, a former Olympic swimmer and vice-president of the organizing committee for the championships, said the committee had to cut ties in 2002 with Savard because his budget proposals were too expensive.

"My recollection was that it (the budget) didn't make sense," Veilleux said. He added that organizing committee president Lynn Heward, who was also director-general of creative content for the Cirque du Soleil, "didn't want to see such a huge budget."

Veilleux said he couldn't remember the total budget Savard proposed for the aquatics championships, but "it was too high."

Savard said that he hired Lynne Bates, an Australian Olympic swimmer who won a silver metal in 1968 before becoming a sports event organizer, to help create the budget for Montreal 2005. Savard said he hired her because she is an authority in the field and had worked extensively with FINA, which is the international governing body for swimming and diving. More recently, she was the chief operating officer for the 2010 world swimming championships in Dubai.

From May 17 to 19, 2002, Savard and Bates dissected the budget at the Auberge Georgeville on Lake Memphremagog, where Savard said he reserved a room for her. "I was living in Sherbrooke and commuting to Montreal, so it was a good place to put her," he said. Bates charged $28,243.02 plus expenses for her appraisal of the swimming facilities and her budget work. Her expenses included $1,545.07 for her three-night stay at the auberge.

It was their budget that was roundly rejected by the Montreal 2005 organizing committee.

Veilleux said the organizing committee hired Savard because he had been vice-president of the world championships for the International Association of Athletic Federations in Edmonton in 2001.

In his short one-year tenure with the Montreal 2005 organizing committee, Savard received $112,776.25 in fees, according to an Aug. 19, 2003, financial statement. The fees were paid to his company Organisports Inc.

He said that he was working for both the Montreal and Sherbrooke events and was using Sherbrooke 2003 resources such as secretarial work and office space to help organize Montreal 2005 because it still didn't have its own at the time. Furthermore, he said, he was paying a lot of his costs "out of my own pocket" because government money had not yet arrived.

"This is normal at the beginning of these events," he said. "The money from governments doesn't arrive until later."

He indicated, however, that Montreal 2005 was slow to put in place banking and office facilities that would have accelerated the organization of the aquatic championships.

Savard said he lives in the Bahamas full-time where he operates his event management company, which specializes in creating business plans and detailed budgets for sports events. "I don't think there is any major international single-sport event in Canada I have not been involved in," he said.

When Savard left Montreal 2005, he also left behind a list of nine consultants that were owed money.

Montreal 2005 had no written contract with any of them.

In a letter to Heward dated Sept. 12, 2002, Savard stated that "no written contract was made with the consultants ... the contracts were made by telephone or during meetings."

He added that he "discussed personally with all the consultants and established clearly the tasks relating to their work. All the consultants carried out the required jobs and sent in their invoices corresponding to their agreed mandates."

The letter then lists claims by the consultants for thousands of dollars in consulting fees. For reasons that are not clear, some of the amounts of the claims have been blacked out while others have not. Susan Powell, for example, claimed $15,000 for creating an accounting chart and preparing an Excel spreadsheet for budget details.

Savard was succeeded by Yvon DesRochers in the fall of 2002. Over the next two years, DesRochers billed Montreal 2005 $1.05 million, primarily in fees. Most of the money was paid through a numbered company based in Nepean, Ont. - 6017517 Canada Inc. and Productions Nadis Inc.

DesRochers committed suicide in February 2005 - shortly after FINA briefly yanked the games from Montreal and just before he was scheduled to appear before a House of Commons committee to explain what happened to $19 million in federal government grants to the championships.

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2005 swim meet in Montreal was an organizational disaster from the start

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